THE forgotten story of trade union activist Vale Rawlings is being retold in Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, to mark the 110^th anniversary of a court case that was the talk of Britain in the weeks leading up to World War I. 

Writer Elaine Pritchard unearthed Rawlings’ story, while doing local history research, and took it to William Walker, secretary of East Staffordshire Trades Union Council. 

Willliam said: “My trade union comrades and I had not heard of Vale before, but it quickly became clear that this was a powerful story that deserved to be in the spotlight again.”

Rawlings, a slightly built man, just 4ft 11 inches tall, was jailed in June 1914 for assaulting a well-built, 6ft police inspector on a picket line in Burton. 

Some 40 young women — two-thirds of the workforce from a town centre factory making flypapers — were striking over pay and conditions.

Rawlings was giving advice to the workers, some as young as 13, when an inspector and two constables walked down the street. The inspector would later claim that Rawlings punched him in the chest.

“Multiple eye-witnesses swore in court that this did not happen,” said William. “Vale’s defence lawyer emphasised the difference in size between Vale and the inspector and also argued that as an experienced trade union campaigner — he had helped found Burton’s branch of the Workers’ Union three years previously — Vale would never be so foolish as to strike a policeman.”

Burton magistrates decided that none of the eye-witness accounts could be trusted, but the inspector’s story must be true. Protesting his innocence, Rawlings elected to go to prison rather than pay a fine. 

The case and its aftermath were covered by newspapers across the country and raised several times in the House of Commons. MP Keir Hardie challenged the Liberal government’s home secretary Reginald McKenna on the evidence and led calls for a retrial.

The co-founder of the Labour Party said Rawlings’s conviction was “a gross miscarriage of justice” prompted by resentment for Rawlings’s successful organisation of local working men and women.

Between 1911 and 1914 Rawlings had worked tirelessly to recruit employees from Burton’s breweries to the Workers’ Union and was instrumental in securing a minimum wage of 23 shillings a week, which put an estimated £30,000 a year extra into the pockets of the working class of Burton.

William and Elaine have now formed The Vale Rawlings Project CIC, a community interest company, to stage a performance and publish a book about Rawlings. An official launch for the Vale Rawlings Project took place in Burton yesterday when local actors read extracts from an early draft of the script that Elaine is writing. It is planned to stage a community performance towards the end of the year. 

Elaine explained: “We have already received a donation from a Burton branch of Unite, which has historic roots in the Workers’ Union branch where Vale was secretary. We are now raising more funds so that we can do justice to Vale’s story. All profits will be split between Burton YMCA and SARAC, a local charity that supports victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence.”

In 1914, when McKenna let Rawlings out of prison a week early, some 15,000 people gathered in Burton to watch Rawlings lead a procession through the town to a rally in the market place. Commemorative postcards were issued, which Elaine and William have had reprinted, with the support of Rawlings’s descendants, to raise funds for the CIC. 

Membership of the Labour Party and trade unions boomed as a result of Rawlings’ case, but weeks later that momentum was halted by the outbreak of war. 

Rawlings was a conscientious objector. Despite a doctor saying his congenital heart condition and general frailty made him “no earthly use” to the armed services, he was conscripted, court-martialled for failing to obey orders and sentenced to two years in Dartmoor prison with hard labour. 

Elaine said: “Vale had been a thorn in the side of the authorities for some years. Was this ‘revenge,’ we wonder? Labour MPs and trade unionists thought so at the time.”

Rawlings’s health deteriorated quickly in Dartmoor and he was released on ill-health grounds just a few months into his sentence in 1917. He went on to become a local councillor and campaigned for more council houses to be built in Burton along with improvements to roads and sewage systems. He died in 1940, aged just 52.

Plans are being drawn up for local trade unions to launch a recruitment week in Vale’s name later this year. “We hope it will become an annual event to honour Vale’s legacy,” said William.

Visit www.facebook.com/ForgottenBurtonStories for updates on the project and how you can help.

William Walker is secretary of East Staffordshire Trades Union Council and has a masters in the history of industrial relations in 20th-century Britain and Elaine Pritchard is a local historian and researcher.